Dual Immersion Academy is a traditional school within the Mesa County Valley 51 School District in Grand Junction. All numbers are percentages and encompass third, fourth and fifth grade. All figures and performance ratings are from 2012 unless explicitly stated.

Dual Immersion Academy is a traditional school within the Mesa County Valley 51 School District in Grand Junction. All numbers are percentages and encompass third, fourth and fifth grade. All figures and performance ratings are from 2012 unless explicitly stated.

This graph shows the percent of students at Meeker, Heiman and the Dual Immersion Academy who scored proficient or advanced in reading, math and writing. Dual Immersion Academy is a traditional school within the Mesa County Valley 51 School District in Grand Junction. Meeker and Heiman are the schools in District 6 with a percentage of students on free and reduced lunches most similar to the Dual Immersion Academy. All numbers are percentages and encompass third, fourth and fifth grade.

This graph shows the percent of students at Romero, Maplewood and the Dual Immersion Academy who scored proficient or advanced in reading, math and writing. Dual Immersion Academy is a traditional school within the Mesa County Valley 51 School District in Grand Junction. Romero and Maplewood are the schools in District 6 with a percentage of English Language Learners most similar to the Dual Immersion Academy. All numbers are percentages and encompass third, fourth and fifth grade.

The percent of third-, fourth- and fifth-graders at Dual Immersion Academy (a traditional school within the Mesa County Valley 51 School District in Grand Junction) scoring proficient or advanced in reading on the Transitional Colorado Assessment Program test. All Spanish-dominant third-graders take the TCAP test in Spanish. From fourth grade on, they take all tests in English. The third-grade scores reflect results in both Spanish and English versions, while fourth- and fifth-grade reflect the scores of all students taking the test in English, regardless of language acquisition proficiency.

The percent of sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders at Bookcliff Middle School (a traditional school within the Mesa County Valley 51 School District in Grand Junction) scoring proficient or advanced in reading on the TCAP test.

“I wanted my kids in this school because this is what Colorado looks like,” said Foster, who has first- and third-graders enrolled at Dual Immersion Academy. “Colorado is not a Caucasian state. And the United States isn’t. When I walk in this building, I feel like I’m some place normal. It’s more foreign to me to walk into a school that is predominately one color.”

Foster was referring to the 50 percent Spanish-dominant feature of her Anglo children’s school. DIA, as it’s called in the Mesa County Valley 51 School District, is designed to cater to an equal number of students who speak English as those who speak Spanish.

It uses a bilingual teaching model that a group of Greeley residents studied before proposing something similar, Salida del Sol, as a charter option in east Greeley.

The pros and cons of dual language academies are plenty. Proponents say dual language offers opportunities for students to become fluent in two languages, including the ability to read and write in both languages.

“I have worked all over the country,” Foster said. “Being bilingual in the work environment is vital. … It has made it normal for (my children) to be in a mixed group of kids. They never look at anybody around them differently.”

Opponents say District 6 has already tried a bilingual teaching model and it failed, and they don’t want to risk it again.

“There is a strong possibility of injuring our children,” said former Greeley-Evans School District 6 Board of Education President Bruce Broderius , who was on the board when District 6 offered a version of bilingual instruction that was eventually replaced with its current model of Structured English Immersion, which immerses students in English instruction and sets the home language aside. “If this board denies it, and it goes to the state, and the state overrules it; it’s on their shoulders. If it’s, ‘Child be damned,’ let that (state) board say it, not this board.”

Dual language instruction has been used to educate children across the world for decades, but only in the last decade has it seen increased interest in the United States.

According to a 2011 report by the Harvard Educational Letter, a bimonthly publication published by the Harvard Education Publishing Group at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, in 2000 there were 260 dual language programs nationwide. By 2011, the number grew to more than 2,000, and today nearly 2,000 schools now offer dual language instruction in California, Texas and New York alone.

Dual language was used in District 6 in the late 1990s at four schools: East Memorial, Billie Martinez, Jefferson and Madison. However, all but Martinez were schools within schools, meaning the district’s traditional program was taught to students who didn’t participate.

The program, which was grant funded, lasted for just a few years. Virginia Guzman Rosales, who was principal at Martinez at the time, said philosophical differences ended it. When Renae Dreier took over as superintendent in 2005, she ended the program under the pressure of standardized test scores that were so low District 6 was placed on academic watch by the state.

“Each program looked very different,” Rosales said. “It was dependent on building administrators and their philosophy of if it would work. Myself and the principal at East were the strongest in support of dual language. But at the time, the district was realizing the scope of where the schools were (academically), so we got a lot of pressure from the district to switch more and more to English. It was frustrating that we never really got the chance to see it succeed. Renae Dreier had a different philosophical belief. And when the grant ended, we went to Renae and (then assistant superintendent) Ranelle (Lang) and asked to continue it, and they said no.”

Broderius said he testified to the state on behalf of bilingual education in the late 1970s, but for different reasons.

“I’m conflicted,” he said. “I do respect, and in fact I’m jealous of, people who are multilingual … but the purpose was to transition students to English, not maintain a language.”

Ginny Huang, associate dean, professor of language education and director of the school of teacher education at the University of Northern Colorado, disagreed. Huang grew up in Canada and said dual language was its international education policy until it looked at changing it to trilingual.

“That was 10 years ago, when the U.S. was first debating bilingual,” she said with a laugh. “Studies support dual language when done right. So many times when it fails, they blame the idea. But based on tons of research it is not the idea. Independent, longitudinal, empirical-based study shows it can be successful for students.”

THE DIA IDEA

DIA Academy is in its 11th year as a district-run school of choice. The school was originally brought to the Mesa County Valley Board of Education by a group of parents wanting to open it as a charter school. The district decided there was enough need to do it as a district-run school.

“The most important thing for a community is to offer choice to families,” said Lesley Rose , assistant executive director of elementary schools. “We are starting as a public school to get better at that. That one size fits all mentality doesn’t fit every family or every kid. We are absolutely 100 percent glad we opened this, no regrets.”

In 2003, the school opened to two classrooms of kindergartners in a modular building on another school’s site and added two classes of kindergartners, 24 per classroom, each year until the school was at full capacity by the eighth grade. It eventually located its own K-5 building in the Riverside district, which is separated from the town by physical barriers including railroad tracks, the river and a major highway and historically has been home to generations of low-income Latinos, similar in demographics and socioeconomic status as the proposed location Salida del Sol has selected on south 1st Avenue near the Boys & Girls Clubs of Weld County.

When Grand Junction began to clean up the area a few years ago, city officials agreed to help restore the former Riverside Elementary School and use it cooperatively between the district and the city. In 2006, the school district built an elementary school adjacent to the building and the former school is used as a cafeteria, preschool, offices and a community center. DIA’s sixth- through eighth-graders are housed at Bookcliff Middle School, which operates as a school-within-a-school.

Some concern over Salida del Sol is that more affluent, white families will not enroll their students into the school because of its location. Foster believes the opposite.

“I would argue that 100 percent,” she said. “We have students here whose parents one or both are Ph.D. faculty at the college. (Most) everybody’s (Anglo) kids who come here, drive across town to come here, a neighborhood that traditionally for Junction has been labeled Latino.”

The approach is not for children to just become bilingual but biliterate, meaning they can read, write and speak fluently in two languages by the eighth grade. Even if started in kindergarten, Huang said the results will be startling the first few years.

“Children can handle two languages at the same time,” she said. “However, their academics will be lower than their monolingual peers. They will catch up with language in one or two years, but academically, it will take longer. It usually takes them until middle school to catch up academically. But by high school, studies show they far exceed their monolingual peers. Generally speaking, if you don’t speak the language, to succeed, it will take five to six years for second-language learners to perform at the level of their peers.”

DIA’s Transitional Colorado Assessment Program scores support that. Students at DIA are tested in their native language in third grade to get a “baseline” level of competency, Monica Heptner , the school’s principal said. After that, they test in English regardless of proficiency.

“I look close at third grade because they are taking that test in Spanish, so we know that they are on track,” she said. “Because when they take that in fourth and fifth grade their performance will be lower.”

Huang said she does not know how well students will do if they do not have Spanish or English as a primary language, such as the hundreds of East African refugee students who live in the area of Salida.

Greg Pierson, Salida board member, said the format chosen for Salida does address that challenge and students who come to the school with that issue will be addressed individually.

Huang said the benefit of the school being a charter school is students who present that challenge will be at the school by choice and that should imply that the parent is involved in the student’s academics and desires a strong outcome.

Salida del Sol will open with students in grades K-8, which is another concern. If it takes several years for students to master the program, some wonder how the older kids will perform academically.

However, the model Salida will use supports instruction of students who come into the system at an older age, board members say, and the students it will be enrolling will most likely come from surrounding neighborhood schools that have struggled academically the past few years, so they believe they can help by offering those Spanish dominant speakers some of their education in their native language.

“The beauty of (instructional model) Gomez and Gomez is it trains teachers on how to work with these kids who only have some English skills,” Pierson said. “They will be picking up the language as they learn and getting their language arts in their dominant language so they don’t lose what skills they have.”

The school will offer 20 minutes a day of individualized instruction for students who need additional help. It is also utilizing techniques Pierson put in place at University Schools such as advisor/advisee programs where each student has an adult to support their educational experiences and the personal learning plan, where students and parents actively participate in written goals and educational plans during the school year.

Also a concern for some is the ratio of Spanish dominant speakers to their English dominant counterparts. Most successful dual language programs are known as two-way, 50-50 programs. They start with about a 50 percent-50 percent mix among Spanish and English speakers so that an English speaker can be paired with a Spanish speaker. Instruction is split so that half the time students are taught in one language and the other have in the other language.

DIA uses this model. Each teacher is bilingual and teaches all 48 students in her grade level. Students get half the day in one language and half in the other language. All lessons are differentiated so they are not repeated.

Salida will not know its ratio because the school plans to accept federal start-up grant funds, which means it cannot dictate what the ratio will be. It has to offer a true lottery, so the ratio could be higher in one language or another. School officials predicts they will draw from East Memorial and Bella Romero, which have Spanish dominant percentages of 57 and 54, respectively. If needed, it will pair a low-level Spanish speaker with a high-level Spanish speaker and the same for English.

“One of the reasons we chose Gomez and Gomez is because they’ve successfully implemented it in situations like this,” said Rebecca Conway, who co-chairs the board for Salida. “They are fighting to get into these schools in New York City. We are responding to the need for a charter school on the east side of town with a high-quality curriculum.”

THE DIA DIFFERENCE

Parents, teachers and administrators at DIA say there is much more to dual-language programs than just the academics or the bilingual opportunities. It also allows students to maintain their culture and learn new ones at the same time.

The teachers at DIA come from all over the world, including Spain, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Ecuador, Columbia, Chile and the United States.

“It is really nice to have that diversity among our Latin population,” Heptner said. “They love to bring their part of world to school with them. It gives our kids the ability to hear the differences in the language and culture.”

In fact, that cultural aspect is why many Spanish speakers enroll their children into the school. MaryAnn Castaneda begged her children to enroll in the school because the third generation of Castanedas were losing the language. She wanted them to maintain a piece of their culture while learning to live and work in the United States.

Finding the right teachers is not easy, they all admit, especially in middle school where teachers must not only be bilingual and certified, but they must be certified in a content area such as math or science. But DIA has found a way.

“We use several types of recruiting,” Heptner said. “New Mexico and El Paso have true bilingual teachers and we’ve made connections there. We also look at job fairs in Arizona and other states that have dual language programs.”

The school has also reached out to universities outside the United States for applicants interested in coming to the U.S. and getting their degree here.

Rose agreed, adding salary does not seem to be an issue. DIA teachers start at the same level as other teachers in the district, around $35,000 for a first-year teacher.

One of those teachers, who just graduated from the University of Northern Colorado in May, said she sought out a dual language program.

Danielle Cingoranelli is in her first year at DIA teaching the Spanish segment of the day. She graduated with her degree in Early Childhood Education, Spanish and endorsements in English as a second language, bilingual and bicultural.

“I chose this because I wanted to teach in a dual language school and teach Spanish,” she said. Bilingual teaching candidates are “definitely growing. When I first started you didn’t have to apply to get into the ESL program, you could just add it. But it’s growing so much they now take applications and they only chose the candidates they think are really going to stick with ESL.”

Cingoranelli added that dual language is a great way to get the community together and said it would be a great fit in Greeley.

“These kids learn how to grow up together,” she said. “They are friends. They don’t see a cultural difference anymore because they are all just kids. The native Spanish speakers are not losing their native language. Instead they are learning the correct grammar in Spanish and they can use that and transfer that to English.”

Huang said dual language teachers are becoming easier to find because of the number of dual language schools and the interest.

She said it’s not surprising a dual language school wants to open in Greeley.

“I know we have professors who have moved out of this district because they want their child in a dual language school and this district didn’t offer it,” she said. “If (traditional) schools are not capable of offering this program, they are giving the opportunity to charter schools to do this.”

Rosales said the Salida board is committed to the time required to do it right and that will make it successful.

“If the community can give Salida the opportunity to open, I know it can become an established program.”

“The beauty of (instructional model) Gomez and Gomez is it trains teachers on how to work with these kids who only have some English skills. — Greg Pierson, board member for Salida del Sol Academy